As one of hardware configurations for realizing a three-dimensional drawing, a tile type architecture is applied. The tile type architecture divides a display screen into multiple small ranges (tiles), and a three-dimensional graphic is drawn for each of the tiles.
In a drawing processing apparatus using the tile type architecture, buffers are provided for a number of tiles. Scene data for internal drawing are read by a tile unit into the buffers. The drawing processing apparatus draws interior portions of each of the tiles based on the scene data for the corresponding tiles.
In the drawing processing apparatus, by using the buffers, it is possible to draw an image without accessing a memory which stores original scene data, so as to considerably reduce accesses to the memory.
In the drawing processing apparatus of the tile type architecture, it is possible to effectively use a cache memory which temporarily stores graphic data. The scene data corresponding to the respective tiles include a graphic index indicating at least a portion of a graphic to be drawn, and a setting parameter pertinent to the drawing of the graphic. In the following, the graphic index, a setting value of the setting parameter, and the like included in the scene data are collectively called “graphic description information”.
The scene data of the tile unit is generated by sorting multiple sets of the scene data, which are generated by focusing on the graphics for the corresponding tiles. The scene data of the tile unit, which are generated by a conventional sort process, are represented by using a list structure in which a storage location of the graphic description information pertinent to the graphics included in each of the tiles is pointed at.